She saw him, and rose.
"I have one way of showing you who is master," he began, and stopped.
She had stepped forward and was standing almost against him.
"Even blindness does not allow you the freedom to threaten."
He shrank back and dropped once more into his chair.
Claire was talking rapidly, savagely. Later she was to be thrown into a despairing self-hate that kept her many a night in tears, but now she went on.
"Do you think I will overlook everything in you because I pity you? There have been times when your impositions, so carelessly thrust upon me, because you were selfish, because you knew I must accept them from you, were almost unbearable. The touch of your thief-trained hands to steal from everything its beauty and self-respect has galled me beyond all endurance. My body has received its last vile grasp from you."
She stopped, appalled at his expression. She did not know, neither of them knew, that love, the ever-changing impulse of creation within men and women, speaks its desire through bitter scorn and abuse, when softer words are too slow in finding their way.
He was sitting there, white, anguished, cowering under her tongue, his whole life shaken. Her words made him feel that the thing she said was true. He had always feared it, realizing that in a measure it was inevitable, and his great strength was now turned against himself, against his bitter handicap, and he was in that tremendous upheaval that requires a rebuilding of one's faith. His belief in himself was broken. His belief in his power was gone. Coming after weeks of thought and fear about blindness, Claire's words tore him asunder and made him feel that there was nothing for him but abject misery and dependence upon charity.
Instinctively, his hand went up as if to shield him from a blow, and he murmured, "For God's sake, Claire!"